Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion made the cover, a LucasArts adventure that had readers deciding who to bring into Dr. Fred's house. The Final Fantasy Treasure Quest concluded, the Game Boy section announced the Turtles' handheld debut, and previews covered Dragon Warrior II, Solar Jetman and TMNT II: The Arcade Game. A Warmech Challenge invited readers to photograph Final Fantasy's rarest enemy for a chance to have their name programmed into a future game.
Is there any way to shut him up?”, “You just have to say the word. I only wish I knew what it was.
Armad Khan and Howard
Power Profile
Celebrity profile · Volume 16
This issue featured an interview with Wil Wheaton — American actor (born 1972).
Ensign Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, four years after Stand By Me, a freshly graduated straight-A student and a Los Angeles Kings fan about to join Michael J. Fox's celebrity hockey team. He talks here about Nicolas Cage, NASA's education programme and a guest slot on the radio, and sounds like a seventeen-year-old with options. He left the Enterprise later that year. The teenager grew up to be one of the internet's favourite gamers: a blogger before that was a job, host of the tabletop series TableTop, narrator of the Ready Player One audiobook, and, in a full circle, the host of Star Trek's own aftershow.
It's easy to pretend I'm Wayne Gretzky every time I score in Ice Hockey.
Wil Wheaton, Nintendo Power #16
Sweepstakes
The Grand Prize winner and a guest toured Origin Systems and Lord British's Britannia Manor haunted house in Austin at the end of October 1990, with a celebrity meeting subject to scheduling. Second prize was a set of FCI's NES role-playing games: Ultima: Quest of the Avatar, The Bard's Tale and Heroes of the Lance.
Comics
Howard & Nester · Volume 16Howard & Nester
2-page strip
Howard Phillips, Nintendo of America's bow-tied Game Master, and Nester, the know-it-all kid who never took his advice. Two pages an issue from the first volume on, with a different game's world to get lost in each month.
A spy spoof of The Mafat Conspiracy: Nester 13, master of disguise, boards the Orient Express hunting Armad Kahn, who knows where Mafat is keeping the kidnapped satellite scientist Dr. Barrows. His detective work — a secret password nobody answers, then flooring a stranger — earns him a beating from the passengers until Special Agent Howard shows up with Kahn's photograph and the real man, the one with the beehive bandage, is chased along the train roof and kicked until he gives up, exactly as the game has it. Kahn will talk once Nester says who he is, which takes a while: he has many names in many countries.
Classified Information
The codes and secrets this issue gave away.
- Captain Skyhawk
- Level skip
- Rad Racer II
- Stage select
- Tetris
- Instant Tetris
- A Boy and His Blob
- Brick Blob
- Nemesis
- Power-up possibilities, Full options plus, Full speed and shields, Power-up drain, Power no more
- Heavy Barrel
- Extra continues
- Willow
- Weird warp
- Final Fantasy
- Game within a game
Counselor's Corner
Game Counselors on callReaders wrote in to ask Nintendo Game Counselors questions about the following games: Crystalis, Snake's Revenge, Shadowgate, A Boy and His Blob, Baseball Stars and Wrath of the Black Manta.
Top 30
These were the top Nintendo games in Sep/Oct 1990, as voted by Nintendo Power readers. Arrows show the move since the previous issue's chart; the peak is the best position the game had reached by then.
| # | NES |
|---|---|
| 1 | |
| 2 | NEW Final Fantasy |
| 3 | |
| 4 | |
| 5 | |
| 6 | ▼2 Mega Man 2 |
| 7 | ▼1 Tetris |
| 8 | |
| 9 | ▼7 Batman |
| 10 | |
| 11 | |
| 12 | ▼2 Shadowgate |
| 13 | ▲8 Super C |
| 14 | ▼3 Ninja Gaiden |
| 15 | |
| 16 | |
| 17 | ▼8 Tecmo Bowl |
| 18 | |
| 19 | |
| 20 | |
| 21 | |
| 22 | ▼4 Metroid |
| 23 | |
| 24 | |
| 25 | ▼12 DuckTales |
| 26 | ▼10 Willow |
| 27 | |
| 28 | NEW Contra |
| 29 | |
| 30 | NEW Al Unser Jr.'s Turbo Racing |